Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-4785766-20170829171219

Ok, lemme get the statement out of the way that Vergil is my favorite character, bar none. That said, I swear nobody ever mentions WHY he does what he's doing in DMC3. That is to say, WHY he wants the power of Sparda. If you'll humor me for a moment, I wanna throw my guess at the wall and see if it sticks.

Eva, Dante and Nero. Everyone knows that Eva was killed in front of Dante and Vergil and because of that, Dante refused to get close to anyone unless they were strong enough to survive a life being hunted by the demons, which effectively meant being alone for most of his life. Vergil did mostly the same thing, but when he went to Fortuna, he conceived Nero, which means one thing:

Vergil let somebody close. Even if it didn't last, Vergil loved someone, and that scared the crap out of him. When he was little, he was powerless to save his family. Now, he had a family again. He had something to lose, and because of that emotional scar, even though he is insanely powerful in his own right, he felt he needed more power.

How do I support this claim? Let's look at the unexplained things Vergil says and does. "Foolishness, Dante. Foolishness. Might controls everything, and without it, you can't protect anything... Let alone yourself." Who or what is Dante trying to protect at this time? He lives alone. I theorize that Vergil wasn't talking about Dante protecting anyone; he was talking about their mutual failure to save Eva, and he was talking about himself.

"Where's your motivation?" I know this seems like nothing more than a taunt, but Dante is only there to stop Vergil from doing something he won't be able to take back. Dante is there for Vergil. Vergil, however, is motivated by the drive to obtain enough power to never have to worry about losing his family ever again.

Now, I know a lot of people write off Vergil and Dante's clashing as simple sibling rivalry, but I recall that Vergil decided not to kill Dante when he had the chance; I don't think he ever wanted to kill Dante, he wanted to make Dante strong so that he didn't have to worry about Dante dying because he refused to gain power.

Now here's where it gets complicated: Dante and Vergil both live by a warrior's code, and that's why Vergil never told Dante about any of this. Vergil didn't want Dante getting involved in the first place, he definitely didn't want Dante going and getting mixed up in his problems.

I know this is a lot, but TL;DR I theorize that because of small things he says and does, Vergil secretly cares about Dante, Nero and Nero's mother a lot more than he ever let on, and that's why he wanted ultimate power in the first place. 